ISRO organises national science meet on Chandrayaan-4 Lunar Sample Return Mission

Bengaluru: ISRO on Saturday said that it had organised a national meeting on the potential aspects of lunar sample science in the context of the forthcoming Chandrayaan-4 mission, which aims at returning lunar samples back to the Earth.

The meeting held on April 16, was attended by the lunar science community engaged in analysing meteorite samples, terrestrial analogs, lunar soil simulants, as well as the scientists who are keen to constraint the remote sensing observations of the lunar surface with ground-truth experiments with the returned-samples, it said.

The participants comprised about 50 scientists; almost 50 per cent of them represented 12 research and academic institutes (outside the Department of Space), including private academic institute, across the country, the space agency said.

During the event, M Ganesh Pillai, Scientific Secretary, ISRO, emphasised on the significance of the national meet in the context of the Chandrayaan-4 mission, fitting in the overall roadmap of India's lunar exploration programme as a major milestone, which would eventually lead to India's first human-spaceflight mission to the Moon by the year 2040.

"There were deliberations from the teams from the U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), ISRO on the plans for the lunar sample curation and analysis facilities, as well as on the Chandrayaan-4 mission," ISRO said in a statement.

"The detailed deliberations, made by scientists and academicians from several national institutions and academia, addressed the aspects of outstanding problems in lunar science, scientifically rewarding potential lunar landing sites, as well as the advanced analysis of the returned samples," it added.